Larry Brinker Jr.

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Apply these best practices to strengthen your relationship as a mentor and partner.  If you're a leader seeking a great personal assistant who can help you elevate your business to the next level, it's essential that you take your time until you find the proper fit. Once you've succeeded at the first step, it's time to nurture the relationship by learning what drives them and what they are most passionate about—treating them like a partner in collaboration on your journey and engaging them in meaningful assignments. While retaining top talent is not an easy feat, here, 15 Fast Company Executive Board members share their best tips for training a high-level assistant that you can count on to work with you closely for the long term.

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Here's what to do when the best-laid business plans of leadership and teams suddenly go awry.  For many business leaders and their teams, the month of August is an essential time for them to assess how the first half of the year went. Are the current strategies that they have in place really working? It's also a time to set (or reset) their goals and objectives for the upcoming year.  Keeping all that in mind, sometimes plans, unfortunately, fall by the wayside or may require some unexpected tweaking depending on external factors like market conditions, customer needs, or technological innovation. That's why it's important to remain flexible and have an open mind about how to pivot correctly when necessary, considering the current situation of your department or organization. Here, 16 Fast Company Executive Board members offer their solutions to help other business leaders and teams stay focused even when their initial plans begin to get sidetracked or fail altogether.

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Business leaders share insights on compensation equity. Paying every employee a fair wage based on their experience and talent—not their gender or cultural background—should be a given. For many companies, treating workers equally for the time they put in at the company each day is simply a best practice. But for some organizations, wage inequality is still prevalent and is an issue that needs to be addressed.  To keep the conversation at the forefront of what's happening in the workplace, we asked 12 Fast Company Executive Board members to each provide one step that companies can take to bridge the gender and ethnic wage gap happening around the globe.

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14 tips for business leaders aiming to reframe a culture of adaptability at the office. For a company to remain competitive and survive in today's marketplace, its leaders must be willing to fully embrace what it means to build a culture of adaptability among a diverse workforce and live up to its own expectations. Improving the company's culture won't happen overnight, but if leaders begin to gather and share employee success stories and transformative behavior patterns, doing so will plant the seed of change for the better. In turn, top talent will be more likely to take a second look at potential career opportunities at the prospective company. Here are 14 suggestions from Fast Company Executive Board members that can lead to a better work environment and a desire to change. 

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Getting comfortable with being uncomfortable is one of the most critical business skills a leader can possess. 

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Does your company practice what it preaches, consistently? When you are trying to build or maintain a successful business, it's important to make sure that the company's core values are consistently being reflected in everything that it does.  As a leader, it's impossible to be everywhere at once. Refusing to delegate specific tasks to free up your time to focus on other priorities will lead to burnout. Ensuring your company's reputation is living up to its standards starts with hiring the right team of representatives. Below, 13 Fast Company Executive Board members share other methods that work for them.

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Implementing these tips can help you ensure both company and employee success. When you are trying to build a successful business with credibility, hiring a reliable and capable power team is the first step to becoming a mainstay in the industry for the long term. Learning to engage with every team member, demonstrating that you are interested and invested in their contribution to the company's achievements over time, is also key to employee happiness and their willingness to stick around as they continue to develop and grow with the organization. Here are 13 other best practices from Fast Company Executive Board members to help employers find strong and competent employees that they can trust and depend on.

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When provided with a little leverage, determined people are often able to pull themselves up the rest of the way. 

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Strike up a conversation that builds consumer trust about what your company stands for before you start pitching your product or service. Pop-up shops and kiosks can be an effective way for existing companies to engage with potential customers in new ways and generate additional buzz around their products and services. However, before they set up a new retail location, companies must consider several important factors. Setting your temporary retail shop up for success involves factors like choosing the right location, researching your target market, and setting clear objectives and metrics to track progress. Below, a panel of Fast Company Executive Board members explore these items more in-depth and provided guidance on how companies can launch a successful pop-up shop or kiosk.

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There's an upside to a downsize. Here's how company leaders can make a difference and maintain their staff's trust. In the past few years, many companies are still facing economic challenges in a fluctuating market, which also makes it difficult when leaders are forced to have tough conversations with their dedicated team about potential or necessary cutbacks. Demonstrating transparency and open communication is one of the most important steps to keep your stakeholders well-informed along the way. If you work together with your team to engage in ideas for alternative solutions, you will set your organization up for success and strengthen your potential to come out on top in the long term. Below, 13 Fast Company Executive Board members share their best practices to help leaders prepare their teams for cutbacks in the business world.

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Be calm and professional in the workplace, so you can lead your employees by example. When you are dealing with team dynamics and diverse perspectives in the workplace environment, there are bound to be occasions when team leaders or co-workers disagree over the projected plans on an assignment or a decision that was made. In these cases, it's best for everyone involved to put the conversation on pause so they can take time to reflect on what's happening and refrain themselves from overreacting on the spot. Here are 13 suggestions from Fast Company Executive Board members to help agitated colleagues focus on the business at hand without losing their cool.

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Leading business professionals offer tips to engage team members all year round. When the holiday season is over and the company is entering a slow business period, it's common for employees to become easily distracted or disengaged if there is no action plan and nothing to look forward to at work. It can also cause some staff members to feel uninspired until the next big project comes along and the business is back up and running at a normal pace. No matter what time of year it is some employees may be feeling stuck, creatively, or in a siloed state of mind. Below, 16 Fast Company Executive Board members discuss their ideas to start conversations and spark creativity and collaboration among your employees, all 12 months.

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If you're feeling overwhelmed or frustrated about a recent oversight on your part, relax, reflect, then implement these tactics to improve. As a business leader, when you think about failure, remember that no matter what the situation, it's simply a chance to improve on missteps so you can continue to grow, move ahead and make better decisions.  It's also important to change your mindset by deciding that things are happening for you, not to you. Once you accomplish this, you'll be able to choose an opportunity and commit to doing your best to get it right in the future. Below, 14 Fast Company Executive Board members share practical ways to leverage a failed business experience, reset your mind, and launch new opportunities to get back on track.

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When businesses plan to mentor rather than simply replace, they can set the building blocks for better long-term success—for the companies and for the people who lead them.